The Corner Where Homer Plessy Was Arrested

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded an East Louisiana Railroad train bound for Covington and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. It was planned. The Comité des Citoyens, a group of New Orleans civil rights activists, had arranged the test of Louisiana's 1890 Separate Car Act, and Plessy was removed from the train and arrested by a detective here, at the corner of Press and Royal Streets. His case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1896 upheld segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal," a ruling that stood until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In 1897 Plessy pleaded guilty and paid a $25 fine. A historical marker was placed at this corner in 2009, the street was renamed Homer Plessy Way in 2018, and on January 5, 2022, Louisiana's governor granted him a posthumous pardon.